VECTOR JIU JITSU

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My name is Beth Thrasher and I began training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in 2006 in the Buffalo/Niagara region while going to medical school. My husband began a year earlier, half a nation away in Mississippi. Leaving medicine to become a math teacher in Jackson, MS was the greatest decision of my life. That decision put me on a path to meet my loving soul-mate and found a youth program together that has changed more than just our lives for the better. Experience a week in the life of managing Vector Jiu-Jitsu…. Scramble to find housing for an evicted child and their family, a young person asks sheepishly for food as practice winds down because there won’t be any at home, become a frontline counselor for a victim of sexual abuse who has an emotional breakdown, drop off another student to the seedy motel where their family is staying, do laundry at your own home for a family that does not have the means, have your best student run bear crawls to atone for their disappointing decision-making on social media, make a home visit for a child who has been absent from school FAR too many times, convince a panicking young man to stay in school because a job at 18 yrs old with no diploma will NOT solve their family’s woes, and oh yeah, you train a bunch of teenagers in a little Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

At the end of each training session, right before bow-out, the students of Vector Jiu-Jitsu shout the program motto: “KNOW YOURSELF, BETTER YOURSELF, and HELP OTHERS!” between cleansing breaths. These are more than words, they are an expectation. The goal of Vector Jiu-Jitsu is to instill in each child a desire to become a better version of themselves every day. Jiu-Jitsu training teaches them self-control and stress management while community service requirements teach them that it’s a lifelong responsibility to give of oneself.

Vector Jiu-Jitsu operates out of one of the lowest performing high schools in the country. Its students’ neighborhoods are plagued by generational poverty, gang violence, crime and overall malaise. It is an after-school youth development program run by my husband Chris Thrasher and myself. Both he and I discovered BJJ at the lowest points in our lives. Training in BJJ both saved us and brought us together. We founded Vector Jiu-Jitsu under the premise that it could do the same for the disadvantaged children of Jackson, Mississippi.

In less than two years, Vector Jiu-Jitsu has saved 3 boys from dropping out of high-school, helped 2 students lose 50 pounds, improved the academics of ALL regular participants, been commended by City Council, hosted 4 jiu-jitsu tournaments at a high school that had never heard of the art, traveled to 3 out-of-town tournaments and cultivated dozens of meaningful relationships with children in desperate need of caring mentors. Over 150 kids have graced our mats and we’ve considered 50 as “regular” participants. At any one time we have approximately 20-25 students on our roster. Children in Jackson move around often, and our program is (presently) only available to those who attend Wingfield High School, so many of our students have had to stop training due to a change in living situation.

Vector Jiu-Jitsu is a 501c3 non-profit charity that seeks to expand and obtain an independent facility, where children of all ages, from all over the city can get bused after school and receive both physical training and academic tutoring or college and career counseling.

Until now, the program has been a sort of “mom-n-pop” operation, subsisting on donations made by generous private citizens and our own meager funds. But we now seek major corporate sponsorship and/or grant-writing assistance. Such funds will be used to open locations all over the state where students who’ve apprenticed with us for years may enter a newly created job field, managing expansion Vector Jiu-Jitsu programs.